Carlos Ninguna is seventeen. His father is a snake-handler and Carlos is his apprentice. When a man who may or may not be on the FBI's Most Wanted List moves into the apartment above them, Carlos is faced with a whole tangle of complicated decisions.Anthony Doerr is one of the country's most honored young story writers. His short stories have appeared in the Atlantic, McSweeney's, the Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story, where "The Snake Handler" originally appeared. His most recent collection, Memory Wall, won the 2010 Story Prize.

    the phenomenon of false entries within dictionaries and works of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement.Peter Winceworth, Victorian lexicographer, is toiling away at the letter S for Swansby's multivolume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. His disaffection compels him to insert unauthorized fictitious entries into the dictionary in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom.In the present day, Mallory, a young intern employed by the publisher, is tasked with uncovering these mountweazels before the work is digitized. She also has to contend with threatening phone calls from an anonymous caller. Is the change in the definition of marriage really that upsetting? And does the caller really intend for the Swansby's staff to 'burn in hell'?As these two narratives combine, both Winceworth and Mallory discover how they might negotiate the complexities of the often nonsensical, relentless, untrustworthy, hoax-strewn, and undefinable path we call life. An exhilarating debut novel from a formidably brilliant young writer, The Liar's Dictionary celebrates the rigidity, fragility, absurdity, and joy of language.

    But as the Argentinian′s tale nears its startling conclusion, his audience is struck with horror at the possibility that Ramon′s clever invention is nothing more than the cunningly disguised chronicle of his own shadowy past.Is Ramon a gifted artist of the imagination or the perpetrator of a terrible act of revenge that defies all forgiveness?

    Sometimes we are the architects of our own fall.Akash Choudry wants a love for all time, not an arranged marriage. Still, under the weight of parental hopes, he agrees to one. He and Jaya marry in a cloud of colour and spice in Bombay. Their marriage has barely begun when Akash embarks on an affair. Jaya cannot contemplate sharing her husband with another woman, or looking past his indiscretions as her mother suggests. Cornered by sexual politics, she takes her fate into her own hands in the form of a lit match.Nothing endures fire. As shards of their past threaten their future, will Jaya ever bloom into the woman she can be, and will redemption be within Akash’s reach?

    Set against such iconic backdrops as the California gold rush, the development of the transcontinental railroad, and a speeding train of modern-day strangers forced together by fate, it is a grand entertainment that asks big questions.The characters of Small World connect in the most intriguing and meaningful ways, winning, breaking, and winning our hearts again. In exploring the passengers' lives and those of their ancestors more than a century before, Small World chronicles 170 years of American nation-building from numerous points of view across place and time. And it does it with a fullhearted, full-throttle pace that asks on the most human, intimate scale whether it is truly possible to meet, and survive, the choices posed--and forced--by the age.The result is a historical epic with a Dickensian flair, a grand entertainment that asks whether our nation has made good on its promises. It dazzles as its characters come to connect with one another through time. And it hits home as it probes at our country's injustices, big and small, straight through to its deeply satisfying final words.

    Nick Martin has just started graduate school when he’s dragooned into serving as the driver, guide and confidant of a blind poet by the name of Jorge Luis Borges. Together they must address an extraordinary series of crimes and the equally baffling conundrums of literature and philosophy, including Zeno’s paradoxes, the mind/body problem, and the mysteries of destiny, personal identity and artistic creation. Nick plays the parts of Watson, Sancho Panza, Dante and Stephen Daedalus, and before the story ends he hears the last tale of Scheherazade and finds the love of his life. Forty-five years later, struggling with pain and grief, he looks back with wonder at the magical year when he wandered into the labyrinth and took his first steps to self-understanding.Lighthearted but deeply serious, The Philosophical Detective is a unique journey into the visionary world of a genius.Kirkus Reviews called The Philosophical Detective “...a suspenseful, pitch-perfect novel with an unlikely lead detective: a fictionalized version of iconic Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)..... An intelligent, original detective novel.”Note: With my apologies, at this time the book is available only in the United States.